WE all have our preferences in football. Whether it’s the teams we support or style of play and formations, the game will always divide opinion.

WE all have our preferences in football. Whether it’s the teams we support or style of play and formations, the game will always divide opinion. But amongst all of this skill and substance, everybody wants a hard man in their team.

In a five-part series featuring exclusive interviews this week, we will provide a revealing insight into some of the most fearless characters to have played the game...

HIS nickname alone suggested Pat Van Den Hauwe was a man not to be trifled with.

But there was substance to Psycho Pat, too.

A footballing mongrel – Pat was born in Belgium, raised in Millwall and played for Wales – he played the game with a terrier like intensity.

His demeanour was memorably captured by Ivan Ponting in his Player By Player series.

“Pat Van Den Hauwe took to the pitch growling, scowling and stubbly, like some villainous refugee from a low budget spaghetti western – and there is no shortage of opposing players and fans who reckoned he continued in similar vein once the game started.

“The brawny left-back positively oozed aggression and earned the reputation of one of the hardest men in the division.

“Occasionally his methods seemed at odds with the spirit of the game, yet there was no denying that the man dubbed ‘Psycho-Pat’ by a gleefully ghoulish element on the Goodison terraces was a footballer of considerable ability.”

The number of ‘victims’ Van Den Hauwe chalked up during his Goodison career was considerable – tricky wingers in particular his favoured targets.

Crystal Palace’s spritely young wide-man Vince Hilaire left Goodison Park on a stretcher following a challenge that was formidably fierce, but remained within the bounds of legality.

The winger’s frail hand flopping off the edge of the stretcher to acknowledge sympathetic applause from the crowd still brings a grim smile to the face of fans who witnessed it.

For a man who seemed to relish his hard-man status, Van Den Hauwe was surprisingly dismissed only once in his Everton career.

The full-back took exception to a Simon Stainrod challenge on team-mate Graeme Sharp at Loftus Road and raced 50 yards to lay out the offending striker.

Both were sent-off.

But it wasn’t merely a willingness to embrace the physical aspect of sport which saw Van Den Hauwe labelled a “hard man.”

Rarely injured, he missed a chunk of the 1987/88 campaign with knee ligament damage – but amazed onlookers by the speed of his recovery and appetite to rejoin the battle.

Van Den Hauwe also added to his reputation off the field – as many media men working in the 1980s will testify.

This was no rogue on the pitch who just as swiftly became a gentleman off it.

In the days when press-men were allowed to loiter outside the dressing rooms to ask players whether they wanted to offer their views, Van Den Hauwe would march out, fists clenched, eyes fixed – sometimes spitting against a wall or grunting in the manner of the Spitting Image puppet – daring an unsuspecting hack to stammer a tentative enquiry.

None ever did.

Not in the tunnel, anyway.

One intrepid reporter once had the misfortune to share a lift back from Wales international duty with several of Everton’s Welsh contingent – and attempted to strike up a conversation with Pat.

He actually managed to procure an agreement with Van Den Hauwe to submit to a rare interview, provided there were “no tricky questions!” – the warning delivered with a jutting chin and pursed lips.

Mike decided to play it safe.

“So, Pat. You must be really proud of your call-up from Wales?” he ventured.

“That’s it!” snapped Pat. “ I warned you. No tricky questions!” and that was that. End of interview.

Predictably, rumours followed Van Den Hauwe in his private life, too.

Team-mate Graeme Sharp, whose wife was friendly with Pat’s then spouse, recalls having to cover for him many times.

“Just tell her I’ve stayed behind for treatment,” ventured Van Den Hauwe. Which was fine on Monday lunch-time. But when Pat still hadn’t returned home by Wednesday the excuse was wearing a little thin!

Then there was the mystery “blood condition” which ruled Van Den Hauwe out of much of the 1985/86 season and spawned all manner of rumours, usually involving city gangsters.

Few team-mates were surprised when, after Van Den Hauwe left Everton for Tottenham, he regularly appeared in the national press as the partner, then husband, of former Rolling Stone beau Mandy Smith.

Van Den Hauwe’s life was as colourful off the pitch as it was on it.

But he remains one of Merseyside football’s great characters – and one of our hardest footballers.

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The Editor

Alastair Machray

Alastair Machray was appointed editor of The Liverpool Echo in 2005 and is also editor-in-chief of Trinity Mirror Merseyside, Cheshire and North Wales. He is a former editor of The Daily Post (Wales and England) and editor-in-chief of the company's Welsh operations. Married dad-of-two and keen golfer Alastair is one of the longest-serving newspaper editors in the country. His titles have won numerous awards and spearheaded numerous successful campaigns.